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Prentiss Calder Biff. The name held refined dignity. Certainly Prentiss' parents had taken great care in selection, given the abruptness of their surname. Biff didn't have the euphonic flow of McVicker, his mother's maiden name, which she’d lobbied unsuccessfully to retain.
The boy’s father died in a freak accident during the wheat harvest, prior to Prentiss' birth, the consequence of too many hours in the field and too few in the maintenance barn. A combine with stuck blades, it seems, should never be subjected to hammering with a crowbar, particularly if the drive train is engaged and the inebriated operator is standing directly in front.
Freda McVicker Biff's insistence on re-assuming her maiden name after her husband's untimely demise caused division within the family. A power struggle resulted, exacerbated by the fact that she was economically forced to live on the family farm with her in-laws. It could legitimately be said that there was a riff at the Biff's.
The controversy raged for eight years or so, until one day young Prentiss came running in from playing in the fields, covered head to toe in cockleburs and screaming at the top of his lungs. The boy was suffering mightily, a fact that became abundantly clear each time his mother extracted a bur from his blotchy red body.
After supper that evening (and several liters of elderberry wine), the boy's uncles decided that Prentiss Calder Biff was not a name for a lad who could withstand an attack of killer nettles. In a ceremony worthy of an apprentice knight, he was christened Sticker McVicker.
The subject was not mentioned again. Freda decided that cosmic kismet had spoken, and there were some things one just didn't contest, remembering what goes around comes around. A sense of humor is a lethal weapon.
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